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Day: November 22, 2010

So how ignorant is it to hold a grudge against a reporter who asked Sarah Palin some questions that she couldn’t answer?

Better yet, isn’t it called projection when one claims that a reporter who interviewed her has a “bias against whatever it is [she] would come out and say…”? I mean, essentially that’s what Palin is saying. She claims she won’t waste her time.

If you find that your Sarah Palin needs are somehow unsated, good news! Tonight she sits down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity and reveals that she wouldn’t bother sitting down again with CBS Evening News Anchor Katie Couric, calling her ‘a reporter who already has such a bias against whatever it is that I would come out and say?’

“As for doing an interview, though, with a reporter who already has such a bias against whatever it is that I would come out and say? Why waste my time? No.”

“I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting. I will speak to reporters who still understand that cornerstone of our democracy, that expectation that the public has for truth to be reported. And then we get to decide our own opinion based on the facts reported to us.”

“So a journalist, a reporter who is so biased and will, no doubt, spin and gin up whatever it is that I have to say to create controversy, I swear to you, I will not my waste my time with her. Or him.”

Couric’s interview with then Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin in the Fall of 2008 raised many eyebrows because the then Alaska Governor seemed unwilling to reveal the specific magazine titles that she read, among other bon mots that many saw as damaging to the McCain-Palin ticket.

The thing about the JKF assassination is that no matter how many decades pass, those of us who experienced the shock and dismay on November 22, 1963 that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas, still have vivid memories of what we were doing that day.

We remember the wall to wall television coverage; shops closing their doors; people buying newspapers as fast as they were printed to get the latest on the Jackie, Caroline and “John John“, the President’s wife and children and to find out how and why this tragic event happened.

Never had there been such a bludgeoning shock to the nation. We watched the coverage of the President’s body being loaded onto Air Force One. We saw Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged “lone” gunman get arrested. Shocking live television coverage of Oswald being shot by night club owner Jack Ruby. The continuing drama, innuendos, speculation and unscripted telecasts culminated after four days of non-stop coverage with the funeral.

Those of us who were witnesses to a sad and tragic moment in our country’s history remember President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States of America. Gunned down on November 22, 1963. He was 46 years old.

CNN has a comprehensive and interactive section on JFK and his assassination here.

Presidential contenders know that the journey to the Oval Office begins with an Iowa office. As such, the fact that Sarah Palin is now searching for office space in Des Moines, IA, has people raising their eyebrows right off of their foreheads. People like The Guardian, who report that two of Palin’s aides are “looking into office space and other logistical needs for the coming year.” Let the horror and/or some amusement begin!

Palin will be in Iowa this Saturday to promote her new book. But even Iowans can access Gawker, so that’s not what people are buzzing about. The Guardian produces some pretty convincing proof as to Palin’ intentions for Iowa and for 2012:

Some of her staff now appear to be putting the pieces in place in case Palin does decide to run. One of the aides, who only eats kosher food, told a local rabbi he was looking into longer term arrangements in Iowa.

“He was looking to be able to accommodate the needs of those coming down looking to set up shop here for campaigning in the coming years,” said Yossi Jacobson of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Des Moines.

Palin’s 16-stop schedule, unusually for a book tour, includes no readings in Los Angeles, New York or Washington DC, but has Palin spending time in states such as Iowa, Ohio and South Carolina.

Swooping in from Alaska to promote your book in swing-state Ohio and influential caucus and primary states like Iowa and South Carolina, while ignoring lucrative yet solidly blue California and New York, eh? Undecided, schmundecided.

I suspect the real reason Newt Gingrich doesn’t want to appear on MSNBC is because he knows they will not ask him a bunch of “softball” questions that fit his agenda. Matthews and Olbermann know their politics and they know Newt Gingrich has been lying about a number of things, because he’s allowed to do that on Fox News.

With speculation about Republican candidates for President running wild, likely candidate Newt Gingrich appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and declared that the Republican candidates for President should organize the terms of the debates and not the news media. Before one dismisses this as the usual conservative gripe against the “liberal media,” it does consistently seem odd that MSNBC attempts to put Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann in the position of hosting election night coverage or moderating candidate debates when each host clearly has a liberal perspective.

Newt’s verbal smackdown:

There’s no possibility that I would ever go to a debate and have Olbermann or Chris Matthews asking questions. I watched the debate a couple of years ago and it was an embarrassment because they were so relentlessly hostile and they were so left-wing that every question they asked of the Republicans was designed to embarrass and divide the Republicans. And every question they asked the Democrats was designed to make them look good. Well why would we participate in that?

What Newt suggests instead is a more serious and substantive debate, possibly even without a moderator, so that the candidates could have more of a conversation and not be limited to “absurd time limits” or have the media focus on gotcha questions. Well what fun would that be? Although Newt’s complaint is likely much ado about nothing since Meet the Press host David Gregory would probably now moderate any NBC debate, it still will be fun to see if Matthews or Olbermann have a “hostile” response.

Olbermann did moderate a debate of Democratic presidential candidates in August of 2007, but that does not explain Gingrich’s confused salvo, since it doesn’t appear that Olbermann was ever in a position to try “to embarrass and divide Republicans” as Gingrich stated.

Jimmy Carter said Sunday that Fox News commentators including Glenn Beck have “deliberately distorted” the news.

Speaking on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday, the former Democratic president took aim at the cable news channel climate, often a target for President Obama as well who says he tries to avoid the cable chatter.

“The talk shows with Glenn Beck and others on Fox News, I think, have deliberately distorted the news. And it’s become highly competitive,” Carter said. “And my Republican friends say that MSNBC might be just as biased on the other side in supporting the Democratic Party, the liberal element.”

The ex-president said opinions about the two channels was “part of give and take” in politics in the United States. Carter also believes CNN has suffered from trying to remain nonpartisan in comparison to Fox and MSNBC.
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MIAMI — All she wanted was $50,000 from the equity in her house to help pay the bills while looking for a job in nursing. What Imogene Hall got was a brutal lesson in the sometimes shady ways of the mortgage industry.

It’s a lesson learned by untold numbers of homeowners in Florida, epicenter of the foreclosure crisis gripping the nation.

“Everywhere I turn, someone else is scamming me,” said Hall, a 49-year-old Jamaican immigrant who stands to lose her Miami Gardens home the Monday after Thanksgiving. “All I do is work hard, and I get surrounded by thieves.”

A review of court records found evidence of misconduct at nearly every stage of Hall’s experience. Consider:

_ Johnson Cuffy, a former mortgage broker now serving an 11-year prison sentence for grand theft, handled Hall’s refinancing in early 2006, using a strategy a state investigator described as “outright mortgage fraud.” He faces up to 30 more years in prison if convicted of 16 other mortgage fraud charges he’s facing.

_ The title agent who signed the crucial deed transfers that Hall’s fraud claim rests on operated an unlicensed title company that stole more than $1.5 million from South Florida home buyers during closing proceedings between 2005 and 2007, according to Florida Supreme Court records.

_ A man who listed his employer as a nonexistent Blockbuster Video store in New York somehow used Hall’s home as collateral to secure a $230,000 loan from subprime lender Argent Mortgage.

_ Hall’s foreclosure was processed by the Florida Default Law Group, one of four Florida law firms being investigated by the state attorney general for using flawed documents to repossess homes from thousands of owners.